Accidentally on Purpose
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: Day 12: Winded. Jack knocks Charlie over, during that fateful race in season 2. Good thing the other runners can go get Doctor Blake.


A/N: Today...Winded. This is an alt prompt. Warnings for some blood, and other injuries.

Honestly, he probably shouldn't have even bothered with the running race.

He hadn't run competitively since high school, and while keeping fit was a part of the job description he knew as well as anyone that there were lots of strapping young men in Ballarat, all of them looking to win twenty-five pounds.

For twenty-five pounds, be could easily take his entire family out for a celebration, which, given that there were five children, did not happen often. He could afford to pay his rent at the boarding house for a few months, maybe go buy himself a new pair of shoes. He didn't like to think of himself as someone who thought a lot about money, but that was his main motivation for joining the competition.

But if he didn't win, he could at least say he went for a pleasant Friday morning run. And it was nice to get his mind on something other than work. Work had been playing so much on his mind he really couldn't sleep, and his roommate threw a shoe at him for tossing and turning too much. He was sick of living with other people. Some day, he wanted to live by himself in a tiny apartment somewhere. With privacy, and as long a shower as he wanted.

For twenty-five pounds, he could probably put down a deposit on somewhere tiny and shitty.

"Go, Charlie!" Someone shouted from the sidelines, and he tried to put just a little bit more into his long, well-paced strides. He could just about see the finish line, and he'd been in the lead for a good long while. Maybe he hadn't forgotten as much about the cross country as he thought he had. When he was a kid, he was on the cross country team, along with a few mates. They did alright for themselves, even if they knew they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell against schools with special programs and diets and stuff.

But they were just kids, it wasn't about winning. It was about getting three days of school a month.

They ran down a slope before they were back on another dirt path right by the lake. If you were really gung ho, you could probably swim in it. But it's also muddy and Charlie was sure that you'd be up to your knees in silt if you put one foot in past the vegetation; not to mention that he had no idea what the Hell kinda fucked up fish Ballarat fish lived in there.

...No one ever accused him of being an outdoorsman.

In his distraction, he'd let one of the other runners, a man in a white shirt, pass him. Fuck. He speeds up as much as he could, aware he was dipping into his reserves of energy when out of the blue two things happened.

One, there was a terrible explosion of pain right on his sternum.

Two, the ground was rushing up to greet his face at an alarming pace.

Then, there was an extremely distinct feeling of something impacting his stomach with enough force that it felt like his internal bits were being shoved out through his back, and a blunt, hard pain in his stomach.

He tried to take a deep breath, but couldn't. All he could do was gasp violently, trying to force air past his throat. The world was mostly drowned out but a sudden thump thump inside his ears, and the desire to get more than a couple of gasps into his lungs. Then, quite against his will, he coughed twice and managed to successfully spit blood onto the ground that was no rising.

"Does he have someone at the finish line?" Someone asks

"He came with Doctor Blake." Another says, and then the first one starts running; he can see it just out of the corner of his eyes. His shoulders hurt. Is someone lifting him up? Yes, he thinks so. The one in the green shirt, the Dennison boy, lets Charlie put his weight on him, and they walk off the track. The other runners mill around, one of them goes under his other arm so they can walk to a nearby bench seat. He still can't breathe, but they seem to be walking for him so he focuses on his gasping little breaths, grateful to be able to breathe anything at all.

"Charlie!"

That's his name.

"He's here!" Someone calls,

"Charlie!" That same voice, more intense. He can hear running, but can barely think enough to look up, he's got blood dripping off his face and onto his cream coloured shorts. Once, he lent his school jumper to a girl who got blood on her skirt during her time of the month, and his mother gave him two pence to spend at a lolly shop. "Let me see." A firm hand comes under his chin, lifting his face.

Lucien Blake, naturally. He is sweating slightly, he must have been the one running a minute ago. Did he run here from the finish line? He tries to pull his face away until he can figure out the source of the blood; he doesn't want to get it on anyone else. He just hopes God has smiled on him just this once and he hasn't broken or chipped a tooth.

"Sit still, let me look," Blake instructs, in a tone conveying no argument. "What happened?" He asked the other runners, as Charlie ran his tongue along his teeth, grateful to find them all still in his mouth and still in one piece.

"Jack Beazley elbowed him, and he fell." Someone says, the group around them is not dispersing, and Charlie still cannot breathe properly. Wait; Beazley? As in...Jean Beazley? That did not bode well for him moving into Blake's house.

"Oh my goodness! Charlie!"

Speak of the devil.

"Don't crowd him, let him breathe!" Blake said, and took hold of the arm Charlie hadn't even realized was close to his chest. It was tender, and when Blake grabbed it, a million nerves in his arms protested at the treatment, and he roughly pulled it away. "Sorry, sorry Charlie." He said, "Did anyone see how he fell?"

"Jack elbowed him, and he fell forward onto his arm." Someone said, bringing a murmur of agreement from the crowd.

"Is he gonna be alright?" Someone asks as Blake starts rubbing his back, and Jean yells

"YOU DID WHAT?" louder than Charlie has ever heard anyone bar his mother yell. He doesn't linger on it, just turns his head to the side to spit out a mouthful of blood. Winded comes into his mind. He's just winded, in ten minutes he'll feel okay again.

"Just focus on breathing," Lucien says as the sounds of a riot begin to drift away from them,

"I - " He gasps. "Got blood on you -"

"I have more shirts." Lucien tells him, "You probably bit your tongue or the inside of your lip when you fell. Once you can breathe again, I'll take you to the surgery and have a look." He says, and Charlie finds the tone reassuring; comforting.

"Take the medal off him!" Someone shouts and Charlie tries to see what's going on but Blake tucks his head against his chest in one swift motion.

"Don't worry about them, just listen to me. Focus on breathing." It's been such a long time since Charlie was held by someone like this. So he listens to the sound of Blake's slightly elevated heartbeat and tries his best to breathe.


End file.
